How I Homeschool Kindergarten as a Mom of 10

If you're homeschooling a kindergartner, you might be wondering how much you're actually supposed to be doing every day. In our homeschool, my five-year-old's direct instruction takes about 30 minutes a day, and she's still learning all day long. After homeschooling eight of our 10 children, I've learned that kindergarten doesn't have to be complicated. So today, I'm going to show you exactly what we do for reading, writing, math, and everything else that makes up her kindergarten year. We just started a new homeschool year, and we're taking things pretty slowly. I had one day this week when it was just my younger kids at home, and I thought, you know, this is a good time to sit down and talk about exactly how I homeschool kindergarten. Our five-year-old daughter, Holland, is in kindergarten this year, and I feel like I need to give a little caveat because in-home schooling grades don't really mean all that much to me, other than telling me roughly what year my kids will graduate. Our kids are learning individually, so if they understand something, we move ahead. If they're struggling with something, we stay there a little longer, and that's just one of the things I've learned about homeschooling. We don't have to make a child fit into a mold or a particular grade level. They're just learning and moving ahead as they understand concepts. And if you're here for the first time, hi, I'm Sheri. I'm a Christian, a wife, a mom. My husband and I have 10 kids. We've homeschooled them from the very beginning. This is our 17th year of homeschooling. I've learned so much along the way. I'm still learning, but I like to share some of my experiences with you all to encourage you here on my channel and on the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com. And if you're feeling overwhelmed and wondering if you're really cut out for homeschooling, check out my course, Beyond School, the Home Education Breakthrough, where I walk you step-by-step through how to go from feeling overwhelmed to being a confident home educator. Comment education breakthrough below or click on the link in the description box to get my free family first framework. Now, Holland, our kindergartner, is our ninth child. So what you're seeing, you're going to see a lot of things here that I do with all of our kids. Things look a little bit different now because we have a full house. So while the actual direct instruction I'm giving her is very similar to what I did with our first, the atmosphere of our home is very different. We have a morning time notebook that we go through and these are things I didn't have in place at the beginning. I'm going to talk a little bit later about what exactly I would do if I had a kindergartner as my oldest child. She's growing up in a big family and so that kind of changes a little bit of what kindergarten looks like. Now, when I had all younger kids in morning time, one of the things I did was teach them the days of the week and how to write the date. This isn't something we've done in a while because I have a lot of older kids here normally, but since I just had my younger kids here today, I decided to pull this out and try this again. All of my other kids know how to write the date, but this was just a nice time to teach Holland and William since I had them to themselves. I want to start by talking a little bit about the layered approach that I've learned from many years of homeschooling. Through the years, I've had times where I was pregnant or we had an infant and we just had to pull everything back to the basics. Because of this, I've learned that there are layers that I prioritize with our kids. The first layer, if everything comes down to what do we absolutely have to get done today? The very first thing is teaching our kids chore routines and hygiene habits. That's the first part of learning is just getting the atmosphere in our home to a place that feels clean and welcoming. The second is to read aloud every day. I've been doing this with all of my kids since they were infants. I didn't have to formally start homeschooling to be reading aloud to them. The third is the direct instruction, teaching them reading, writing, and math. Then after that, the last layer that I add in when we have everything to a comfortable level where we're handling everything and able to get through it. The last layer I add in is the content subjects like history, science, art, music, health. This is the approach that I've taken when I have times that are overwhelming. If we have a home renovation, if we've just come back from a vacation, we'll peel back the layers to the most important things and then slowly add in as we're ready. I think this is especially helpful in kindergarten because there's so much pressure to make kindergarten look like a miniature version of school. Just remember, you are teaching an individual child. You're not running a classroom. You're a family. You're not a school. Adopt this mentality and it will really help you as you're homeschooling. Let's talk about the bulk of the direct instruction, which is the 30 to 45 minutes that I usually spend with my kindergartner. During this time, I am targeting three things, reading, writing, and math. I want them to start learning to read first of all. As soon as a child can read fluently, it just opens up a whole new world for them. For reading, I start when my children show signs of readiness. There's actually some controversy over when children should begin formal academics, whether you should start early or delay, but I found that the best answer is just to watch the child. When they're showing signs that they're ready, I start teaching them. That is when you should begin. I have another video where I go into more detail about the signs of readiness. It's in a video and a blog post, so I'll link that if you want to look more into that. But with Holland, we started last year teaching her her letter names and sounds. I found some cute letter cards on Etsy that I used with her. We went through all of these and after that became easy for her. We began working on putting the sounds together and sounding out words. Once I know that she knows her letter names and sounds, we move into the Bob books. We use sets one through five. I've also created a phonics companion guide that goes along with these books. I created it because I wanted to introduce the phonic sounds in the order that they actually appear in the books rather than teaching a random list of phonics patterns. You can find that phonics guide on ourlifehomeschooling.com. I'll also link it for you below. With Bob books, we typically read two stories a day. When she's fluent with those, we'll move on to the next book. I'm looking for the point where she's not struggling over every word. It just is easy for her. At this point, she's not reading to understand. She's just learning to read. I don't ask comprehension questions. I just want her to be able to read fluently. For handwriting, we've used handwriting without tears with most of our kids. I really love the progression they use. It's simple. It makes sense. But after teaching handwriting to so many of our kids, I found that I don't really need the whole program anymore. I am a very simple person. I buy a manuscript tablet from the dollar store, and I teach our kids one letter at a time. We start with the capital letters, then move on to the lowercase. Once a child can write all of their letters, we move into copying a simple sentence. I like to connect this with what we're already reading. After Holland reads her Bob book for the day, I will copy one of the sentences from the book into her tablet. I'll have her watch me form the letters. She copies the sentence, and then, this is key, have the child read it aloud back to you. This is a great way for them to see their mistakes. In one simple activity, we're practicing handwriting, reading, spelling, and then just connecting the spoken language with the written language. That's really what I'm looking for at this age. Math has changed a little bit for me over the years. When I started homeschooling our oldest, I used Right Start Math, and I absolutely love it. It teaches the base 10 system. It uses math manipulatives and games to help kids understand concepts. I still love the way it teaches math, but it's very teacher-intensive, and as our family grew, I needed something that my kids could do more independently. We now use Singapore Primary Mathematics, but I haven't abandoned what I love about Right Start. I still begin my kindergartner by teaching them many of the games and concepts that I used from Right Start. I just begin with some of these games and also give them the Singapore Level 1A math to do along with it. If I were starting all over again, I would probably teach Right Start Math Level 1B and then move into Singapore 1A and have the kids go from there. That combination gives them the concepts and that foundation because kids really need to move from the concrete to the abstract. But then Singapore is great for having them move toward independence as they grow older. Now I have another math video where I explain all about how I teach math. I'll link that for you here so you can take a look at it if you want to learn more. So this kind of wraps up the direct instruction that takes me about 30 minutes, the reading, writing, and math. But as I mentioned earlier in the video, from the time my kids were very little, I have always been reading aloud. And this read aloud time is really where they get a lot of the content subjects like history, science, art, music, and just great literature. So that is something that I've been doing even before she started kindergarten. This year, some of the books I'll be reading to her are some of the Dahl-Lehr books. These are history stories. They're great picture books. They have people like Christopher Columbus, Pocahontas, Buffalo Bill, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington. And then I'm also going to be doing the Burgess Animal book. I'm doing this with Holland, but also my third and fourth grader. And this is a great way to introduce kids to mammals. Now, as I mentioned in our family, we have so many things going on because we have other children that are learning, but I want to break it down for you so that you might have an idea of what I would do if I were starting from scratch with just one kindergartner. I would start first of all by setting some routines in place. When our kids are three, I teach them three things. When you get up, make your bed, get dressed, brush your teeth. Those three things they can do. And then start by giving them simple chores. Help get your home atmosphere nice and clear and make it a welcoming place before you begin any kind of learning or activities for the day. Secondly, I would probably have a simple morning time. Just read the Bible, a Bible story, practice a memory verse, and maybe sing a hymn. Be learning one hymn a month. Then I would give direct instruction. So the reading, writing, and math that I already mentioned that takes about 30 to 45 minutes. And then the last thing I would add to our kindergarten day would be read aloud. And for this, you should be reading great literature, but you can also include some history books. Just like I mentioned, the Dahlia picture books, they're just great for exposure and everything you read aloud to them is just opening up a whole new world. After this, your child should have a lot of time for free play. Let them go outside, explore in nature, play with their siblings. I bring Holland along with me. She's cooking with me. We go to the library. We go to our weekly co-op. We have play dates. She is listening to conversations throughout the day. So she's constantly learning. So as you start kindergarten, don't let the academics overwhelm you and make you lose the big picture. Remember that life skills, relationships, books, outdoor time, play, conversations, different experiences, these are all part of learning. And we are teaching the whole child. After homeschooling eight of our 10 kids, I'm much less interested in making kindergarten look like school and much more concerned with giving our children a strong foundation. Teach them basic routines. They don't need to have a rigid schedule, but they should generally know what's coming next in their day. Read wonderful books. Teach them to read when they're ready. Give them a foundation in math by cooking together and counting and playing games, and then give them plenty of time to play, explore, create, help you with your work, and just be a child. If you're homeschooling a kindergartner this year, I hope this gives you some encouragement that you really can keep it simple. Start with the basics, build from there, and enjoy these little years. They go by so much faster than you think. Thanks for watching. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.